Rose Remembers
by Ghilanna Faen Tlabbar
Summary: Set after Doomsday. Rose is upset and decides to randomly write a letter to the Doctor, with surprising results. [Slighty AUish][OneShot] RoseTen


**A/N:** Yes, I'm really upset about what happened in Doomsday….The Doctor gets torn away from Rose as he's professing his love to her? Jeez. Sometimes I wish I were a Dalek so I could shoot the writer who contrived to erase Rose from the works. And to me, she WASN'T stupid, though I've heard many people say she was. If she was stupid, wouldn't she decide to stay safely with Mickey instead of the Doctor? Or would she have been able to find out how to befriend the last Dalek in the Ninth-doctor episode "Dalek"?

Okay. Rant's over. –deep breath- Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Anyway, as you may have noticed, this takes place after Doomsday…nothing like writing a good, romantic, fluffy, angsty fic to cheer you up, eh? This is loosely based on the book "Bringing Up the Bones" if only for the part where Bridget writes letters to Benji.

* * *

A week after the Doctor had been pulled from her; Rose Tyler was still in a state of abject despair.

_I miss you. _

_I miss you._

The words pounded over and over in Rose's head, like the surf against the shore. Ever since the Doctor had vanished on her, she had often come to this place to be alone, to think a while. Here, she felt closer to the doctor than anywhere in the dimension. It was as though somehow, on this particular Norwegian sand dune, that she could sense him again. A little of the excitement she always felt when she traveled in the TARDIS with the Doctor always came trickling back here, as though he were to appear to her any moment, beaming and offering assistance into another journey through time and space.

Oh cruel fate, if only that was possible!

_I couldn't hold on._

_It was all my fault._

_I miss you._

A tear trickled down her face, then another. Or was it the brackish spray from the windswept waves? One thing was always another on this beach. Like the Doctor himself, first one thing than another. Rose bit back her tears, and forced upon herself some more torture of reminiscence before she would allow herself to cry.

She remembered that first adventure with the Doctor in startling, bitter clarity.

"_I'm The Doctor, by the way. What's your name?"_

(Ah, the nonchalance in the way he said it! Could she ever forget that?)

"_Rose."_

"_Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!"_

A melancholy, ironic smile twisted her lips as she recalled that night. Rose basked in that memory, all the time struggling to keep the tears contained for now.

Another memory suddenly struck her, one that caused her to utter a shriek of laughter and choking sob at the same time. The first time she and the Doctor had danced…how did that come about anyway?

"_Rose! I've just remembered!"_

"_What?"_

"_I can dance, Rose! I can dance!"_

" _Actually, Doctor, I thought Jack might like this dance."_

"_I'm sure he would, Rose. I'm absolutely certain. But who with?"_

And from that little epithet, they had gone on to dance. Rose giggled wanly as she recalled that incident. That memory passed, and her face went through a lightening-fast change once again, to the heart-breaking outlook once again. For the memory of the trip to 1869 in Cardiff had come back to her. She'd barely thought upon this, but…oh this was one of the most painful memories now, if only for its beauty. This was with the form she'd known him in first.

"_Don't laugh." Rose had giggled, displaying her Italian gown._

"_Blimey! You look beautiful!" The Doctor gasped, staring. It was only then he noticed his folly and gained control of himself._

"_Considering."_

"_Considering what?" She questioned him._

"_Well, you're human." He grinned._

"_Now there's a compliment…" She teased him._

The memory faded swiftly, only to be replaced by a horde of others. Fighting the Sycorax…The Slitheen…The Gelth…Meeting Sarah…K-9…The Daleks…Adam…The Doctor's Regeneration…

And now the tears came, thick and fast in a blinding mist of salty moisture. She bent her golden head into her knees, which were drawn up into her chest, and wrapped her arms around her legs. Rose let go, howling and sobbing out all the agony of the past week. The tears soaked her the knees of her jeans, dripped through several strands of her shining hair, and generally went everywhere as she cried for well over an hour.

_Oh, Doctor! I miss you so much!_

The last shimmering drops clung to her lashes as no more could come. Rose felt drained, and she lay in the weak sunlight of the Norweigan beach, regenerating and regathering her strength. Thankfully, no tears were left to shed, so that word choice could not set off another storm of anguish.

After about fifteen minutes, the girl sat up and reached for a plastic bag beside her. The white carrying-looped were double-knotted and the bag turned over to prevent the precious contents from sea-spray. She turned it over, and carefully unknotted the loops and opened it, to reveal a ream of white paper and a plain black pen.

For she was going to write a letter to the Doctor.

It was a silly notion, she knew it would never reach him. Yet, pouring out her heart in a letter would be comforting for one, and two…well, you never know what might happen to a piece of paper in such a windswept area as this coastline.

So, she began;

_Dear Doctor,_

_You may never read this, you may never care. But if there is the most infintesmial chance that I can somehow talk to you one last time, I will take it._

_I want to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't hold onto you during the closing of the Void. I'm sorry I'm too weak, too feeble, too bloody _human_ to let go of these emotions. I'm sorry I cherished the notion of having you for my own._

_I have to wonder though; was that promise you made to me just to cheer me up? The promise that you would never discard me, the promise that I would be with you always. This is surely how Sarah Jane felt when you left her…am I to become what she has? One more gem on your necklace of memories? Pretty, nostalgic, but of no useful value, other than looking nice with your others?_

_I'm sorry Doctor, my emotions are so mixed this week. Love, hate, melancholy, fear, anger, hope...it's like the TARDIS's Time Vortex. I have no idea what to think, not a wisp of decision…it was all I could do to drag myself to this beach and write to you._

_And I hope you'll know, Doctor, that not even Mickey can give me what I had with you. Pale love, human love…perhaps this is what my love felt like to a Time Lord like you. But I want you to know, that I still love you. I cannot think of anyone else but you._

_Yours, ALWAYS,_

_Rose Tyler_

With a resigned sigh, she folded the letter and left it on the sand.

That night, a typical Scandinavian snowstorm howled through the area. Rose, in her new room of the new house, lay silently, crying just a little. The letter was going to be lying there on the dune tomorrow, sodden and dreary. The ink would be running, obscuring the heartfelt words…oh, stop it Rose, she scolded herself. You knew this would happen. You can simply go back tomorrow and write another to him…and with that thought, she fell asleep.

But the letter had not been lost. The snowstorm carried it along, surely as any postman. The paper fluttered upon the gale-force winds, only to be snatched from the air by a rather deft hand. Though only an image. The man attached to the hand looked at the letter with an air of mild surprise. Than as surely as he had appeared there, he vanished.

The Doctor looked down from the computer projection screen to the piece of paper that had issued from a slit in the control panel. Nonchalantly, he picked it up. The neat creases were duly opened, but as he looked at the handwriting…

"Oh my God." He breathed, letting the letter flutter to the floor from his now-numb hands.

You may ask what the Doctor was doing in the alternate dimension again. Well, simple. He'd found a star close to dying, and blown that one up to talk to Rose. Hadn't he said that it took the energy of a supernova to power the TARDIS to punch through? He wasn't kidding. But the TARDIS wasn't too happy with the arrangement, and so deposited him here. Even if the ship wasn't a creature, it certainly behaved like one…

Finally, he was able to unstick himself from the spot of floor where he had been glued by shock and bent gingerly to pick up the letter, as though it might turn into Dalek Sec at any moment. But no shapechange took effect, and he opened it.

_Dear Doctor,_

_You may never read this…_

Next morning, Rose awoke drearily to face the day once again. She forced down a plate of eggs and sausages and fairly ran to the beach. Hoping against all hope, she raced up the side of the dune, her heart falling as she saw a neatly-folded piece of white paper sticking from the sand. Feeling flat as a pricked balloon, she picked up the piece of paper and unfolded it. But the first words on the page affected her with as much shock as the Doctor had felt when he opened Rose's letter:

_Dear Rose,_

_Greetings from the TARDIS!_

* * *

**A/N:** And that, my friends, is the end of an extremely angsty OneShot that took a whole night. You know the drill….review, but don't flame. I'd like to know how I could fix what I write, and not in a rude fashion. Thank you!


End file.
